Saturday, 25 April 2009

Pleasant northeast wind, two monarchbutterflies being idly blownthrough the ivy -- airplane sounds,traffic sounds, sounds of someonehammering. Being, idly blown from star to star on a sporemakes it across all that nothingjust to have a home, like the bollweevil in the Leadbelly song,just to keep from lying down alone.

...'on the idea of a suspension or slowing down of time in the afternoon... there is an aspect of Tom Clark’s writing that is intrigued with time, never confining it or accepting a linear understanding of time, but always opening it up and making time more fluid.

'In the poem “Day Detail—Low Light of Afternoon” there are several places where the poem describes the afternoon. First, in the title there is a holding in place, or a distinction being made about the afternoon as a “Day Detail.” There is a lot of emphasis on repeating sounds, which serves to float the poem in time. There are many examples of alliteration and consonance and assonance throughout the poem, beginning in the title with “Day Detail” and “Low Light” and continuing in the lines, “butterflies being idly blown”, and “from star to star on a spore”. Clark also repeats words and phrases “just to have” and “just to keep”, “star to star”, “being idly blown” twice, and the emphatic repetition of the word sounds in the lines, “airplane sounds, / traffic sounds / sounds of someone / hammering.”

'I especially love the way Clark uses the phrase “being idly blown”, changing it grammatically the second time to create another meaning and use for the phrase. The first time the phrase is used in the opening lines, “Pleasant northeast wind, two monarch / butterflies being idly blown / through the ivy” and the second time the phrase is used, “Being, idly blown / from star to star on a spore”. The phrase is both the philosophical weight of the poem and it is floating delicately through it.

'The poem continues after “Being, idly blown / from star to star on a spore / makes it across all that nothing / just to have a home” and again I get the sense of the loneliness that Clark illuminated in the poem “Afternoons.” This loneliness is more vast because he is describing it on a cosmic level, but he is also specifically talking about a particular aspect of being alive and being conscious, an awareness of time. The poem ends, “like the boll / weevil in the Leadbelly song, / just to keep from lying down alone.” Like the lines “being alone is a song / a cigarette in bed” these lines at the end of “Day Detail—Low Light of Afternoon” capture that essential feeling of separation that humans have and make it something real, or tangible, something we can understand, like a song, the music of the blues, a cigarette in bed, and the desire for home and companions.'